The new film by Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent, House of Tolerance) is a terrorism thriller like no other, recalling the likes of Bresson, Carpenter, Alan Clarke, and Michael Mann in equal measure. Over the course of 24 hours, a group of young, multiracial radicals holding a mostly unstated left-wing ideology stage a series of terrorist attacks across Paris, then hide out for the night in a shopping mall. As they kill time amidst all the contradictory luxuries and distractions of late capitalism, the state’s manhunt begins. Will they survive the faceless and ruthless encroaching authorities? Or, as the walls close in, will they even survive each other? Featuring a surprising yet utterly fitting soundtrack that includes Blondie, Shirley Bassey, Bonello’s own menacing electronic score, and the eternal classic “Whip My Hair”, Nocturama is a transgressive and immaculate hybridization of arthouse and pop that raises many unsettling questions but presents no easy answers. What it does offer is a thrilling but devastating microcosm of the millennial experience and the current crisis of neoliberalism, all wrapped into one of the 21st century’s most powerful cinematic experiences yet.

“In Nocturama, Bertrand Bonello has made a film that mixes the more police-influenced elements of Jean-Pierre Melville with the abstract beauty of Stanley Kubrick through the prism of Sofia Coppola’s alienated youths.” – Kaleem Aftab, The National (UAE)

“Bonello stages bravura cinema choreography with a chilling confidence to match this circle of youth who may be some kind of ultimate realisation of Guy Debord’s Situationist revolution.” – Robert Koehler, Sight & Sound